SIGNATURE WORK
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2022

China has established a regulatory framework for fishery management to solve the issue of overfishing and protect marine resources. This paper examines the current Chinese fishery management and the implementation of TAC (Total Allowable Catch) in China by reviewing research on marine fishery management and analyzing data in Chinese Fishery Yearbooks and other databases. This paper first examines fishery policies and the current situation of marine fishing. Based on the international experience, we observe the nature of TAC, different ways of TAC implementation, and various advantages and disadvantages. Given the regulatory complexity of fishery management in China, we take TAC as a key mechanism in the current fishery management system and analyze its implementation in nine pilot areas in China. We focus on the roles of the special fishing license system and the spot trading system, which are two of these important systems supporting and having synergies with the TAC system in China. This paper identifies the need for more pilots of TAC implementation as well as policy improvement on the interactions between the TAC and other fishery policies in China.